AND THEN... We Americans are now entering another of our "So what!" eras?
We are at the point of recovery from "9-11" during which we tend to minimize much of that which may take place in our "up-for-grabs" future - a time when we, unwisely, tend to explain away much that took place in those dreadful hours in the hearts, minds and very souls of thousands of citizens. The tragic conditions were affixed firmly and with definite influences on the lives of those who lived it all, saw it happen, heard about it from victims or read accounts of its horrors. We "lived" through the tragedy in varied degrees and a questionable self-confidence enables us to relax a bit.
In contemplating the events just past we cautiously look to troubles we may have to face up to in the future. The problems we consider now were not, in the main big ones we predicted fifteen or twenty years ago. Almost no-one in 1961, for example, for instance, could have forecast then what our present day problems might be. Just a few years can make a great deal of difference.
Some of the impending disasters we worry about never happen. They may have been exaggerated or resolved by circumstances along the way In 1969 things looked rather grim in the field of education here in the United States. There were over four thousand arrests of college students and conservative figure estimates that about three million dollars in campus was destroyed. There was a strong fear of a take-over by "radicals" of some really picturesque types. One of the nation's largest "think tank" groups (In 1962 and still at it, too!) predicted "computers and automation threaten to create vast unemployment may spell the end of the United States economic system ...and we see no ready solution for the resulting unemployment."
It may well be the seeds of ultimate solution to our major problems are to be found in the concern which urge us to undertake a bit of real worrying and even take some steps toward solving what is, at that time, only a fear that such a change might take place. We are, then, perhaps "duty-bound" to pay a sensible amount of attention to our small problems which seem so large as they happen.
"We, the People" have short memories, too. We seldom rejoice and give thanks for the things which did not happen. "John Q. Public" simply forgets that which happened to others and takes his good fortune more-or-less for granted.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 9-12-06 [c441wds]
